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My thoughts on the Fenix 6S Pro GPS and latest updates

icarus86
over 2 years ago

I own a Fenix 6S Pro since February 2021. Overall, it's been a good experience, but not great. Sadly, I find that the GPS is still quite inaccurate after so many updates down the line, which IMO is the main selling point for a Fenix watch.

This is what my post is about, actually.

I'm still on FW 24.10 (more on this later). I went to ski for a week in late March, and noticed that the battery would not last for two days of activity. Every day, I would charge the watch to 100% before going to sleep, wake up with about 90-95% battery (I noticed a bit of drain during the first 1-2 hours after unplugging the watch from the charger), and then go for what is almost a "full ski day", meaning from around 8.30-9.00 AM and until 4.00 PM. This means around 7 hours of GPS-on time, give or take. After returning to the hotel, my battery would be around 45-50%, every single day. This means that the watch would not "survive" until the end of the next day. So I had to charge it again. Every single day, same story. Disappointing.

When I'm not using the GPS, but have BT enabled and connected, my watch would last for around 6 days, which I find about normal for my 6S Pro. So the GPS is the main issue for me.

So what do I think happened here? Garmin saw that the GPS is inaccurate and tried to optimize the SW around it as much as possible. They've been doing this with almost every single new major FW release, and is to be admired, honestly. But this in turn lead to more battery drain (perhaps due to additional computations made on-the-fly in order to correct for the inaccurate GPS), which I think is now "addressed" in the new FW - if a bit too aggressively.

Overall, FW 25.xx has proven to be a complete fiasco. I usually wait for a week or two on my "old" FW, after the new FW version has been offered for upgrade, and this attitude has proven to be perhaps life-saving for my 6S Pro, given the experience some forum members have been through with the newest 25.xx branch.

I think we can all call it a day for the Fenix 6 series. Garmin tried and tried, but there is only this much they can work around an inherently inaccurate GPS chip. One thing is bad though: the quality control on SW updates leaves a lot to be desired. Garmin should look at the whole FW 25.xx (starting with the still "stable" 25.10 which is still a mess, IMHO) and ensure that nothing like this happens again.

Cheers to all!

- sorry, English is not my first language

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    there are so many threads here or reddit about gps accuracy on fenix 6.Pretty much all of them conclude it's a hardware thing, mainly the gps antenna position on the watch itself. If you ride a bike - the watch looks up, GPS is very accurate; if you run - it's bad. People tried running with the watch face pointing up - increased accuracy. Fenix 6pro is my 2nd garmin watch after vivoactive HR, which has a very accurate gps tracking, and i think because of two reasons: gps antenna better position, and all plastic body. The only peace of mind i have is that i bought the watch used and fully anticipating a bad gps (even not so accurate HR), and got it very cheap, so i don't regret financially, but it this was a new watch - i'd feel like a total sucker.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    I went to ski in January with my F6pro. i had my chest strap too. i found the gps to be reliable and did not drain my battery. everything worked as expected. not really sure the firmware at that time but i only use public releases. are you using a custom watch face ?

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to iWerry

    Yeah, I bought it new... and changing the wrist position in a different way for each activity type, especially for a $700 watch, is a NO-GO...

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Pierrotsc

    Only used public releases, although with a small delay, as mentioned in my original post.

    Never used anything custom on it. 100% stock, no extra apps, no extra watch faces (not even the ones published by Garmin).

    My GPS FW is 5.50, which according to some posts here indicates an older version. Are you using the newer version by any chance?

    And what's mentioned in another thread here also fully applies to me: almost all my activities end up having a 5% shorter distance than whoever else I'm doing the activity with.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to icarus86

    Mine is terrible as well. It used to be passable but in the last few months, it's almost unusable. The GPS tracks are much, much worse than my dad's FR645 and my partner's FR245.

    I did a 17km trail run last weekend, my dad got a 16.8km activity... mine was 15. Just absolute trash.

    Here's some of the things I tried, to no avail:

    - Changed from GPS + GLONASS to GPS+GALILEO

    - Changed activity recording to every second

    - Deleted CPE file and let is recreate itself automatically

    - GPS soak for a lot of time

    - Synchronizing the watch in Garmin Connect while acquiring GPS signal

    I also enrolled for the Beta program (no updates yet), but I can see in the forums that it's kind of a russion roulette.

    I love the Garmin ecossystem but I'm not sure if my next watch will be a Garmin.